Vonnegut for Judge Judy, SCOTUS

Judge Judy gains in the court of public opinion

Kurt Vonnegut has climbed aboard the Justice Judy bandwagon.

"I'm all for Judge Judy for the Supreme Court," the 82-year-old novelist told me. "I don't want any other judges, just her. She is so fair-minded and so ideally American."

Vonnegut, the author of "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle" and other best sellers, is joining columnist Richard Cohen - and me - in urging President Bush to consider television jurist Judy Sheindlin to fill one of the vacancies that will be left by the departures of Sandra Day O'Connor and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

"She represents the authority of the state at its most humane and reasonable," Vonnegut said. "She represents an America that I would like to belong to."

Vonnegut told me he "got hooked on 'Judge Judy'" a few years back, when he was in Northampton, Mass., teaching at Smith College and recovering from the effects of smoke inhalation suffered in a house fire.

"She's a swell performer. But that's just fun. And she is very attracive, spiritually. I like the way she deals out justice."

Vonnegut, a self-described "New Deal Democrat," said he has no idea what Sheindlin's ideology is. "I'd like to hear what she'd have to say about abortion and gay marriage," he told me.

But as for skeptics who point out that presiding over a TV small-claims court is worlds away from sitting on the highest court in the land, Vonnegut answered: "There is no difference. She refers to the law again and again. American law is American law."

Lloyd Grove, NY Daily News, July 11, 2005